Cashless economy an invitation to online fraudsters

Mumbai: The international standards body for the payments industry has called for a cybersecurity breach notification law to raise awareness of online criminals. According to the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council, the move towards a cashless economy post-demonetisation has also sent an invitation to online fraudsters of a new market opening up.

In information security circles, any unauthorised access to an individual's data is called a breach. The council prescribes the international benchmark for safeguards in electronic payment transactions. To ensure that cashless transactions are safe, the RBI has asked everyone in the payments industry to adopt PCI data security standards.

Speaking to TOI, Jeremy King, international director, PCI Security Standards Council, said that while the migration to a cashless society will be beneficial to a wider population in India and provide greater opportunity to merchants and banks, the biggest challenge is that online criminals have become very organised and global. "I am a big supporter of breach notification. Without a breach notification, we pretend we have never been breached, and banks and organisations accept the loss," he said. The risk to banks were not just in the payments business but wherever personal data was stored. There have been instances when telecom data was hacked to access bank details . While the demand for auditing payments infrastructure has risen , India is facing a shortage of IT security auditors. " RBI wants more approved assessorsto support the large base of merchants and banks. We are working on that," said King.

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